Although state building has become mainstream it suffers from inadequate intellectual and policy coherence. Responding to a set of wicked problems pertaining to weak or failed states, contemporary state building remains circumscribed by many of the problems it strives to address. Building upon the existing literature, this paper seeks to add clarity in two distinct ways—that relate directly to the agendas of policy-making and academic research. First, addressing the prevailing ahistoricism, it argues that the genealogy of contemporary state building can be traced in processes of state formation in Western Europe and casts into sharper relief what is distinctive and what is familiar in these processes in the West and the rest of the world. Second, in considering the critique that contemporary state building neglects nation building, this paper contributes by both clarifying the terminology and by highlighting the mediating role of nationalism in the construction of the national community. It contends that the stateness of polities undergoing state building is intrinsically linked with nationhood.
